About

Dark Obelisk: Druid Enclave (Pathfinder/5E RPG City Setting)

$3,574

pledged of $1,500 goal

98

backers

TL;DR: The Value Proposition

If you're looking for a richly-detailed, lavishly-mapped city campaign setting with plenty to do and see, Druid Enclaveis an outstanding gaming asset for any Pathfinder or 5E/Fifth Edition gaming context.

If you want to get on board with Dark Obelisk, or if you are playing any Pathfinder or 5E adventure that involves any city or Druid context, and want a way of fleshing out some detail, this book will be valuable to you.

Art credit Jack Kaiser

What is This Book?

This product is a 300+ page full-color PDF and hardcover roleplaying supplement that will enhance any Pathfinder or 5E campaign in any setting.

The Druid Enclave will be a richly detailed hardcover gaming sourcebook, and companion to one of the most ambitious and massive indie RPG adventures in recent memory.

Finally, if you're new to it, this campaign is the quickest, easiest, and best-value way to get on board with thousands of pages of adventure.

Stretch Goals

UNLOCKED! $2,000: New Chapter: The Netherroots. A region of deep underground, where the roots of the trees themselves form a community that's cold and unforgiving. The trees oldest and wisest harbor the deepest grudges against the surface world.

UNLOCKED! $2,500: New Chapter: Underriver Grotto. Strange phenomena have resulted in this enormous underground and underriver compound, a place of magic and mystery and intrigue.

$3,000: New Chapter: Geomorphic Cartography: Forest Treks. I'm particularly psyched about this one: Modular map tiles that link together in a nearly unlimited number of permutations. These can be used to describe any trek through the deep forest. Incredibly useful for dynamic adventures, or for high-speed or high-tension chase scenes where the GM doesn't have to prepare anything in advance but will still be able to cover a trek of any arbitrary length. Each map tile has a Player and a GM side, with annotations and items of interest throughout the tile. Tiles will likely be around 50' x 50', so each one is really its own little scene unto itself. At this level of unlock, the plan is to have a chapter describing Forest Treks with at least a dozen Geomorphic Cartography tiles and corresponding annotation; the maps will also be available as individual high-resolution image files for VTT or print-and-play use.

Background & Overview

Dark Obelisk 1 was planned to be a 64-page softcover urban adventure. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, and months of development, it evolved into a 1,000-page mega adventure with more than 50 NPCs, delivered in the form of two massive hardcover books.

Dark Obelisk 2 was planned to be a modest continuation of the adventure path. In the course of its KS campaign, it saw a tenfold increase in funding, and more than a dozen Stretch Goals
.

One of these Stretch Goals was "Druid Enclave", intended as a ~200 page hardcover campaign setting that explores the mysterious city of the Druids who commissioned the PCs to explore Mondaria City in the story of Dark Obelisk 2.

The Druid Enclave will be immensely useful in any of the following contexts:

If you're not running Dark Obelisk 2 at all, and simply want a really interesting ready-to-play campaign setting with a dozen gaming sessions' worth of content.

If you're looking to "mine" a sourcebook for interesting ideas for use in your own game's campaign setting.

If you're running DO2, and you want to spend more time in preamble to the main storyline, the PCs could travel from Berinncorte to the Druid Enclave.

If you're running DO2, and you want to give the PCs something to do in the wake of the events of that mega-adventure.

If you're running DO2, and you need a meaty interim setting to act as a bridge to DO3 (planned).

Art credit Kim van Deun (www.eyesInTheForest.com)

This Kickstarter Campaign

This Kickstarter campaign is an opportunity to enhance the content of The Druid Enclave, expanding it to be an extraordinarily detailed and useful companion to DO2 or a standalone resource.

I'll be transparent and honest here: I've committed to making Druid Enclave anyway, as part of the Dark Obelisk 2 Kickstarter. However, with your help and backing, I can use those additional funds to commission artwork and spend a ton of time fleshing out the lavish details and extensive full-color maps you've come to expect from Infinium Game Studio.

This is also an opportunity for those who may have missed other Kickstarters to join in the effort--funds raised from the highest pledge levels will be used to enhance Dark Obelisk 2, currently in development.

The Product

The Druid Enclave is an enormous city complex. Above ground, it's roughly four times the size of Berinncorte from Dark Obelisk 1; beneath, its extensive root system and tunnel network form a subculture all its own.

Maps: Over 100 full-color, richly-detailed maps describing overviews as well as zoomed-in buildings and battlemaps, in both GM and Player variants.

GM (top) vs. Players' (bottom) map example

NPCs: Dozens of citizens, council members, ne'er-do-wells, and other colorful denizens of the Druid Enclave.

Quests: A dozen or more Quests, exploring the intrigue and deceit that underlie this mini civilization.

GM- and Player-Friendly Formats: Every single map comes in a GM version with full annotation, and a "redacted" Players version that hides secrets and references and is just more of a battlemap. In addition, each version of each map is included as a separate, ultra-high-resolution image file, for use with DTT/VTT gaming tools or just to print out at larger size. Finally, every PDF comes in a print-friendly version with a full-color parchment watermark background, and a smaller-filesize mobile-friendly version with a white background. Check out some examples below.

Who Gets What

Some backers of prior Kickstarter projects will already automatically receive the results based on their existing pledge commitments. Because they're all awesome, and believed in me early on.

In other words, those backers currently set to receive the Druid Enclave receive the benefit of this campaign at no extra cost.

(Conversely, if you've backed a project of mine, but for whatever reason don't qualify for a copy of DE, then you won't automatically get a copy of the expanded book. Don't remember for sure if you do or do not get DE? Just PM me and I'll be happy to look it up.)

Add-Ons

Assuming the project gets funded, once things wrap up, you will have the opportunity to get Add-Ons via BackerKit.

Below are some planned Add-Ons. Which Add-Ons end up available, and at what prices, is subject to change between now and the BK survey going live. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to message me!

Shipping: For all items, typically $10 US / $15 rest of world. Combined shipping on multiple items halves this rate; I am still working with BackerKit as to how to implement this best in the survey!

Pipeline Timing

Many products listed as Add-Ons are planned, in the pipeline. They're definitely coming. But I'm terrible at estimating my own work. This is for two main reasons: 1) I have a day job and three kids; 2) I have a habit of writing books far far far bigger than I had initially envisioned them.

Check out the IGS website for my best guesses as to publication dates for future products. I hate to turn money away, but I'd much rather set expectations realistically than to have well-meaning and awesome backers be disappointed.

Short version: It'll take me a while to deliver everything on the radar. But I will make every attempt to make it worth the wait, and to do so in a way that rewards early adopters as much as possible.

Creative Input Add-Ons

$75 Muse: Design a Character: Name, and help design, a character. Your character will be included in the book, and have custom full-color artwork associated with him/her/it. These Add-Ons will be limited to 5.

$125 Vibrant Muse: As Muse, but the character will have a persistent role to play in the greater Realm of Aquilae mythology and Dark Obelisk Adventure Path storyline. These Add-Ons will be limited to 2.

Premium Color Add-Ons

All Atlases are automatically printed in Premium Color. Nearly all other published and planned books default to Standard Color. Where the option for Premium Color is available (or planned), it's marked below like this: [PCO $40], meaning Premium Color Optional, and that it's a $40 additional charge.

That's a lot. I agree. I can only say that unlike some publishers, our Premium Color charge is pretty much at-cost: whatever the printer charges is the cost we pass along to you. That said, these figures are guesswork: On some books, we'll end up losing money if the book turns out to be big enough!

So is premium color worth it? Your call. My personal take is that it is worth it, but only on books that I intend to actually run with my gaming group. For casual reading and reference and mining for ideas and inspiration, for example, it's a truly indulgent expense.

Whenever I buy indie RPG books from RPGnow, if the publisher gives the option to print in Premium Color, I usually go for it. But that's me. YMMV.

It would be a small fortune to buy every single book we plan on publishing, in premium color. But damn wouldn't it look nice on your bookshelf... :)

Setting Book Add-Ons

These are sourcebooks, presented as part of the Realm of Aquilae campaign setting, but usable in any adventure context and quite mine-able for ideas and inspiration even if your gaming group has nothing to do with Dark Obelisk. :)

Adventure Book Add-Ons

Each of these is a mega-adventure, or bundle of normal-sized adventures. They're planned as 200+ page hardcovers rich in lavish detail, full-color maps, intricate NPCs with backstories, and of course, Quadded Statblocks to let them be used with PCs of any level.

I'll be completely honest here: These will almost certainly end up costing me money, or I'll maybe just break even. Premium color is hideously expensive to produce, and my penchant for mapping each and every single detail in my books, and offering a Player and a GM version for each map, means the actual pagecount will balloon significantly. To wit: Dark Obelisk 2 will have at least 166 maps. At least. (My money's on 200, when all is said and done, but we'll see.)

But they are just so insanely useful and awesome, particularly if you're a GM with any intention of running these books for your gaming group. These Atlases are created to make actually playing the books as easy, and as fun, as possible, for both GMs and players. So are they expensive? Hell yes, painfully so. Are they worth it? YMMV.

(separate Atlas product will be published for each Setting and each Adventure book)

(cover image art credit Kim van Deun www.eyesInTheForest.com)

Risks and challenges

Time. I can guarantee that it'll be completed, and worth the wait and worth your pledge dollar; I cannot in any way guarantee *when* it will be delivered! Any dates listed or mentioned are guidelines, like the Pirate Code... they shouldn't be taken as written in stone (or indeed, too seriously!).

IGS strives to make the best possible indie RPG gaming products we can. As a result, we tend to err on the side of "late but great": an excellent product when it's done, as opposed to an okay product immediately.

Druid Enclave is already in development, and about 10% of the content is already created. This campaign, if successful, will add a good amount of additional content beyond that.

Extending things will, as I've said, take a bit of extra time, but it's using an established process that I'm quite comfortable with and that has next to zero risk implementing.

So barring a natural disaster, I can pretty much guarantee this will happen. It's just a matter of how long it takes me to finish!

As with everything else I do, how long it takes is a function of the competing elements of my life: three kids, a family, a full-time day job, stupid bodily requirement to get more than 3 hours of sleep a night... that sort of thing.

Support

Pledge $1 or more
About $1.00

Lurker

Get updates from the project as they are made throughout the campaign and product development.

Also, gain access to additional IGS products, both published and planned, as Add-Ons via BackerKit once the Kickstarter campaign wraps up.

And get your name in the "thank you" section of the final product.

Not terribly exciting, right? You should probably scroll down and pledge at a higher, more interesting, level.

Some pledge levels involve multiple products, and some involve dozens of products that are part of a planned product "pipeline". In all cases, the "Estimated Delivery" of a pledge level reflects when delivery is scheduled to *begin*, not complete!

Note that some of the planned future products may end up having Kickstarters associated with them to expand and enhance the content (such as this KS!); if you qualify for you automatically receive the upgraded version in such cases without having to contribute to those Kickstarters.

All other pledge levels receive these minimum acknowledgments and benefits.